Football Shorts

After the cut-and-thrust of transfer deadline day, fans of decent clubs have the relative calm of an international break to look forward to. Not so for lower leagues, and Bradford City last night prepared for a tough test at home to Brentford this weekend by fluffing their lines at a not-so-tough test with bottom of the league Hartlepool United, who ran out convincing 5-0 winners.

Phil Parkinson told The Telegraph and Argus: “Defenders didn’t defend properly. They didn’t win headers, didn’t defend the middle of the goal whether it was from set-pieces or in open play and we got punished for it.”

“The fans haven’t seen that sort of performance for a long time.

“I have to apologise to them for not going over to clap at the end but my mind was on getting in the dressing room.”

While the transfer window’s fresh in our minds, Leeds United manager Brian McDermott has branded the spending by Premier League clubs in the transfer window as “obscene”, as he gave an interesting insight into Championship clubs’ finances.

“What happened on Monday was obscene,” he said. “If you look at the money some clubs spent when some people probably cannot afford to go to a game, it’s absolutely obscene.

“I don’t think there’s a lot of money around in the Championship.

“Wigan have got money; QPR have and Reading have. Leicester I thought had money, but I think they’ve got a big wage bill now.

“There isn’t the money around in this league like there was.”

Mark Robins has told the Huddersfield Examiner that he is happy with his squad after deadline day, despite losing Jack Hunt to Crystal Palace and missing out on a mystery transfer target of his own.

He told the paper: “We worked very hard to do something, but it didn’t happen.”

In case you’ve been wearing a blindfold under a rock in a darkened room and missed transfer deadline day, here’s the edited highlights:

Mesut Ozil Joined Arsenal for a fee of around £42.4 million... Marouane Fellaini made a cool £27 million move to champions Manchester United, who reportedly missed out on a number of other transfer targets including Leighton Baines and Ander Herrera... Everton replaced Fellaini with James McCarthy in a £12m-plus deal and even had time to grab Chelsea forward Romelu Lukaku on a season-long loan... And Ian Holloway made his FIFTEENTH (one-five) signing of the summer at Crystal Palace.